We were lucky to catch up with John Serrano recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi John, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

Well, my “Alive Trilogy” (that’s full length albums “Alive”, “Still Alive” and “Come Alive”, released between April 2024 and October 2025 by British independent record label Monochrome Motif Records) are definitely the most meaningful thing I’ve done on a personal level. Recording and writing those albums (often a simoultaneous process, since 75% of them is either heavily improvised or ad libbitum accidents) is how I’ve found my own voice and sound. However, I’m also currently working on an album with Phallucy’s guitarist Josh Coker and James Slattery and drummer Rob Steadman from indie rock band Stornoway, and another full length album with Andrew Hartshorn (who also runs Monochrome Motif Records) that features pop and jazz legends like Gary Alesbrook (Kasabian, Scissor Sisters, Noel Gallagher) and we’re also working on a separate album together as “Hartshorn · Serrano”. Our first single from that one, “Retail Reverie”, was mastered by Grammy winner Sean Magee (Rush, The Beatles) at Abbey Road, so was the instrumental version of the same tune. Getting to record and mix at my own home studio and work at the same time with legends all over the world –including Emmy winner Dino DiMuro, Spanish prog rock band Somewhereout, even working on “pasodobles” for Spanish composer and conductor Javier Blanco, has led me to get my name dropped on national radio (Cadena Ser here in Spain) and travel 1500 miles to perform my music.

It’s true today’s artists are also expected to be full time working musicians/producers/songwriters/live performers, but for me that’s the very point. The endgame of releasing my first album “Summer of ’15” back in September 2021, a synth pop record, was to find the work space that would allow myself to record and perform the music I like as much as possible. So today I’m recording every instrument, every section — and mix and produce myself on my own tunes if I want to, through acoustic instrumentation and little mixing work, or just write and record a death metal album with friends in six weeks, then start blues live trio or tour North Spain or Leicestershire, UK, by myself with my Takamine. Consistency often looks ugly and weird at first if you don’t take some distance, and yes, the most unexpected projects can be the ones that turn out the most meaningful. What works for me is never doing anything safe, though. I guess that’s why they say my music is jazz!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m definitely proud of my work, all of it, and I think that shows. I’ve always been a farmer, been driving a forklift or working with trucks for a paycheck then spending 90% of my time learning sound engineering and music theory, starting or joining projects that felt right, often losing money and so-called opportunities if the money was quick and easy. It never is with this music thing.

Honestly, people tell me they buy my records or hire me for their own projects or perform at their festivals because what I do moves them, they think it’s really good even when it’s not popular or it’s hard to define, that’s pretty much it.
It’s an amazing feeling to get one of your songs covered by a friend from a country you’ve never been to, or have a random dude on TikTok proposing to his girlfriend while your tune plays (she said yes thankfully!), or get an email from someone who’s always been an influence on your own music to tell you they’ve just written a section inspired by your own songwriting. There’s a couple dozens of both independent and mainstream acts and artists I started following as a fanboy that today upload my music to their own social media or tell their fans they’ll tour Spain with Serrano and all that stuff often overwhelms me, I don’t think I could have achieved that if that had ever been my goal. I believe we share the passion and joy. No one learns to play six or seven different instruments then travels for 12 hours straight to play for forty minutes out of anything else that isn’t pure obsession, and I share that with a lot of people that were already well established in the music industry when I knocked on their doors, and same for the rest of grassroots, independent artist I work with/for.

About what sets me apart from others… Well I wouldn’t know, to be honest, so I think what sets me apart from myself back when this was only a hobby it’s both the risk and the discipline. I don’t take time between albums or shows or paid upfront recording sessions to think, I just keep going and writing and recording music as much as I can. I often write lyrics too ironic or even honest to even disagree with afterwards, and get to live with those songs myself, and my fans — and clients, they know. They’re with me, often finding meaning where I can’t, and the more they listen, the more they get into it, the more I compete with myself to improve on whatever keeps them here. But most of my listeners are Steven Wilson or King Crimson or Nick Drake or Pat Metheny fans. I can’t trick them into thinking I’m smarter than them or the very artists we admire and look up to. So it does take a lot from me, and thankfully the amount of energy, love, pain, grief that goes into each song also rests now on their shoulders, it’s theirs now. I get to keep the knowledge and experience, learn from my many, many mistakes, then keep going. There’s always this one detail I accidentally stumbled across while making the last album, and exploring it leads to write a new song in order to see if that knowledge works or I haven’t learned it right, then try again, then again, then maybe I find something else while failing, and so on. But I would say that what I believe it’s important, is practice and work. I haven’t met anyone making a living out of this that likes the word “talent”. It’s just a massive amount of knowledge (never enough, though) then telling your body to ignore the pain, your brain to ignore the fear, and then you get to do what you were doing in your room back when you were twelve that made you so very happy.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I convinced myself for years I wasn’t good enough, and I would never be — I haven’t been to music school, I have never been to college, I am self taught in English, music and sound engineering. And what I considered to be a massive flaw turned out to be something folks really like about me. It’s given me an unique approach, I’ve built my work ethics, my reputation, credibility and discipline based on my actual experience and goals, and it turns out to work great for me and inspire others to build their own road and make it work for them.

What I’ve learned is that people don’t care if you’re in massive pain and have no idea what you’re doing or you really really want to play stadiums and have spent ten years learning bebop sax. They only care if it makes them feel less lonely and in less pain, or the pain that you make them feel teaches them something about themselves, not you. So what I had to unlearn was to think or care about myself when I’m making art, or when I’m entertaining my audience or helping a client make his idea come to life. It’s never about me. And it’s never about thinking about what others want or think they want, that’s such a rabbit hole, not recommended at all, no. It’s about IT.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Yes. My very mission is to have a creative journey. I make records, sing and write tunes, learn to play fretless bass mid-album or start playing acoustic guitar with a bow like it’s a cello mid-track in order I get to do it again, more often, and hopefully it moves the same people that were already listening, and a few more. And hopefully I find something that wasn’t there before. Hopefully I can come up with a feeling, a thought, an idea, that helps someone else stay alive, or stay mentally focused, like art and books and film and even television have helped me before. Other people’s songs and emotions and ideas have helped me find meaning, inspiration, happiness. I want people to feel safe with me, to be with me when I’ve barely made it out alive of something awful that I want to sing about, when I’ve fallen in and out of love and when I’ve felt the most intense joy of my life, and I want to be there with them when they think life’s terrible and they can’t take it alone, I want to be with them when their kids go to college and when they get in the car to buy a present for their spouse.

It’s become an obsession that’s eaten up everything else, and your priorities start changing and your life is often a mess, and sometimes people don’t get you and you feel lonely, but the food tastes better. You’re walking the dogs or having a smoke while it rains outside, looking through the window, and the world makes sense. So that’s my goal. Make sense out of the world around me for as long as possible, and get to feed my dogs in the process.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://johnserrano.bandcamp.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_john_serrano/
• Twitter: https://x.com/John__Serrano/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@The_John_Serrano
• Other: https://johnserrano.bandcamp.com/

Image Credits

Pictures by Andrew Harthsorn (Retail Reverie vinyl, Alive CD), Isabel Postigo (all John Serrano pictures, either holding instruments or recording/performing — all “forest” pictureschris tweed), Chris Tweed (Still Alive vinyl shots) and Idra Estudios (the live pic, live at Layana, Zaragoza, Spain, October 2025)